M A D
by RuthieBelle
Summary: Many fans think Miss Hart dangerous and up to no good; now she has dirt to hang over Brax and Julia and William's head. How is William going to make Julia safe from Miss Hart? This is an extension, a separate-ish story, inspired by Ch 2 in Killing Dose Redux and written because you asked for what happened next...


A/N: How is William going to make Julia safe from Miss Hart? This is an extension, a separate-ish story, inspired by Ch 2 in _Killing Dose Redux and written because you asked for what happened next..._

_**# # # # # # # # # # # # # #**_

**_...Nine o'clock in the evening, Chez Murdoch..._**

….To the empty room William muttered, "Not again..."

His thoughts rushed and tumbled. He thought about wishing Julia would try at least a little to understand his point of view, stop flying off, stop assuming the worst, stop always running away to protect herself from perceived rejection.

_This is how Julia is,_ he told himself, _how she sees the world and her place in it. _

_She will always charge ahead. She will not think things through. She cannot understand that it is the deception, in the middle of an investigation, I cannot abide. And she will always instinctively want to escape. _

The knowledge of this deeper truth was brutal. He thought about all of his own choices, all of the decisions he has made to act, or not. _And I am always too slow to tell her how I feel. _

_Dear God_, he prayed to the brass Jesus, _please protect Julia…I cannot live without her._

His whole body was wound into a knot. He looked around the room, trying to order his thoughts. _What a mess!_ So much was out of his control, especially getting through to his wife at the present moment.

Slowly, painfully, he refocused his mind on something he _could_ do something about: Violet Hart. He went to his desk and opened the side drawer. In the back of the drawer, he released a secure mechanism which opened a second compartment. From it, he extracted a set of detailed and damning documents, discreetly gathered over several months courtesy of Freddie Pink, and a .38 calibre, quite untraceable, revolver. He closed his eyes as he held them both, one in each hand, in an unconscious gesture imitating Lady Justice.

_Julia, you think I do not love you, will not protect you. Oh, Julia. If only you knew… you are capable of making me do __**anything**__. _

He clenched his jaw, then sighed._ Perhaps the problem is not where we are different, but where we are too much alike._

He knew his marriage was going to take a great deal of time and effort to repair. He also knew where she might have gone...who she might be seeking solace from. _Someone she works with now...like she used to work with me..._

Unwanted mental images pushed themselves to the front of his mind and he swallowed them back down. If it came to that, he'd forgive her seeking comfort from another man since he'd failed to offer it himself. At the bare minimum, he could protect her and everyone else from a worse fate.

He opened his eyes to look at the items in his hands.

_This part is going to end, tonight, one way or the other._

_**# # # # # # # # #**_

…_**Three o'clock in the morning, in a small room in a tiny house on a slender Toronto street…**_

William's guest looked puzzled and slightly aggrieved at being woken in the middle of the night to be brought to the back door of a Cabbagetown workman's cottage on Amelia Street. Before they could say a word, William put his hand up to offer a seat at the small wooden table crammed against a whitewashed wall. "Thank you for coming," he said as he closed the door to the alleyway.

"What is this all about, Detective Murdoch?" his guest complained warily before accepting the chair.

William sat opposite, trying to appear calm and authoritative, while at the same time his heart raced, briefly considering abandoning his plan. It was not too late. Perhaps this was ill-conceived, rashly cobbled together and executed in a scant few hours. There was no guarantee it was going to work, that he was going to be persuasive enough, present enough evidence to neutralize Miss Hart…

He had only one shot at this and if he failed then instead of liberation, he might entangle himself, Julia and the inspector ever deeper. William searched his companion's face, reminding himself that the alternative was even more untenable. Even if it is a gamble, in his heart, William knew Julia was worth the risk. He reached across the table.

_..."Miss Hart, I asked you to come here so we could confer." _ His words were clear, business-like.

"_About what, detective? I see no dead body."_ Miss Hart sounded confused and irritated.

"_About Mr. Carmichael senior and how you became appointed as the city coroner,"_ he stated.

She gasped. Her chair scraped as she rose suddenly. _"Detective, I have no idea what you are talking about. There is no body for me to examine, is there? It seems you have called me out here under false pretenses. My superiors at the control board will not take kindly to a station house detective wasting the city's resources this way." _Her tone implied a threat.

"_Please sit down, Miss Hart,"_ William's own voice sounded sharp, insistent. _"You are an ambitious woman, and it will benefit you to hear what I have to say."_

"_There is little I am interested in hearing at least from you at this hour, detective. You have had an irritating tendency to assume I work for you and the constabulary. I do not. Now if you will excuse me…"_ Her heels struck the floor loudly as she walked away.

"_I know you tried to frame Inspector McWorthy as the one who planted false evidence against Constable John Brackenreid."_

She stopped walking. _ "That's ridiculous," _she answered.

"_Mr. Richards of the control board was very curious why Chief Crown Attorney Carmichael insisted that you be rather precipitously named city coroner, even before your references were gathered and you were interviewed by the full board."_

She walked back to the table._ "I was the logical choice. I am qualified and I served for months while you and your wife were away. And I am very good at my job!"_ she defended.

"_Indeed, Miss Hart. I was just saying the other day that you are too good a pathologist to make mistakes. My quarrel is not with your usually competent findings. But you did try to frame John Brackenreid by planting a bullet fragment in __Lucille Palmer's body."_

"_I did no such thing!"_ Miss Hart snapped back indignantly.

"_Actually, you did," _William's voice was flat. _ "And you planted your spare key to the cold room on McWorthy's person."_

Miss Hart did not answer for some time. _"That is an interesting story, detective. As I told you before, if someone did such a thing, they should be arrested, but you'd have to prove it. Right now, you have nothing but scurrilous supposition." _ Her voice rose nervously at the end.

"_Actually, Miss Hart, you might want to sit down for this."_ He tapped the tabletop three times, then Miss Hart moved her chair slightly to sit back down. The folder made a soft sound as it opened on the table.

William cleared his throat. _"Inspector McWorthy owed his promotion to Inspector by being cozy with ex-Chief Constable Davis and his cronies, rather than having earned the position. When Davis was ousted, McWorthy turned to other members of the Control Board to offer his services. He was groomed by Allen Templeton and the Chief Crown Attorney, to offer certain protections to selected important men in return for keeping his new position." _

"_It is impolite to impugn a man's character when he is not here to defend himself, detective. There is hardly any…_" she was cut off abruptly as William plowed on.

"_You also wanted a promotion that you had not fully earned, and asked Inspector McWorthy to put in a good word for you with the Control Board. Which he did, by the way, by talking to Allen Templeton and Mr. Carmichael senior."_ He paused. _"That was before McWorthy became uneasy with protecting Carmichael junior, and let the young man's father know he was going to follow the investigation wherever it led. This alarmed Mr. Carmichael senior. To that end he did three things. Number one, he had Constable Bauder remove John Brackenreid's gun from evidence and plant a bullet in the mattress. Mr. Carmichael, being well versed in evidence, pried a sliver off the bullet and his second action was to give it to you, telling you that if you planted it, you would become the new city coroner." _

"_How dare you!"_ Miss Hart hissed, her hands making a loud slap on the table. William could hear her excited breathing. _"You are making a huge mistake, Detective!"_

"_No, Miss Hart, you have. Let me show you." _A page brushed the tabletop with a rustle. _"This is a statement from two passersby who saw you enter a carriage outside Station House No. 1 the night before we had that second look at the body. They distinctly remember your brown cape and blue blouse, your black umbrella. They took notice because they wondered what a well-dressed doxie was doing so boldly soliciting right outside a police station…after all, what else was a dark-skinned woman doing out in the middle of the night, un-escorted in that neighborhood, if she was not selling herself."_

"_Detective…!"_ Miss Hart sputtered.

William's voice rose. _"And you _were_ selling yourself, were you not!?" His own palm slammed into the table. "I have a statement from the carriage driver that Mr. Carmichael senior was his passenger, and that he stopped for you,"_ he continued. "_The next morning you pretended to find the bullet fragment in Miss Palmer's body. This," he slid another sheet of paper over, "is Mr. Richard's affidavit stating that Mr. Carmichael pressured the majority of the Board of Control to rush through your promotion right after that fragment was located. By the afternoon editions, your photograph was in all the papers."_

"_You cannot prove quid pro quo…"_

"_Did you know ahead of time that you would be implicating Constable Brackenreid?" _ William's interruption stopped her talking.

"_N…no."_ This time she stopped herself from giving any more away. _"I was only doing what you asked me to do by looking again at the body. And this is not the only time I have been asked to bend the evidence!"_

Before she could say more he overrode her. _"Not by me, nor at my behest have you ever done so!"_

"_No, but…" _she tried again.

William had a little desperation in his own tone when he cut her off again. _"As I said, you are actually too good a pathologist to have made such an error in missing that fragment the first time. And then there is the problem with the spare morgue key winding up on Inspector McWorthy's body. Yours are the only fingermarks on that key." _

A third page dropped, as William continued methodically, relentlessly. _"These are sworn statements from both of your morgue assistants that the spare cold storage key was in your possession after that Monday when you said it went missing. In the morgue, the afternoon after you became coroner, you overheard me and Inspector Brackenreid acknowledge that who ever killed Mr. Sutton was still at large and that I intended to find him." _ Another paper slid out of the folder and ended up on the table. _"I have records from the telephone office, which placed a first call from the morgue to the Chief Crown Attorney's personal telephone. And second one right after that to Station house No.1, for Inspector McWorthy, both timed out to be exactly after the inspector and I left you." _A swoosh of pages landed on the growing pile.

"_I have legitimate business with both the prosecutor and the constabulary…" _Miss Hart sounded anxious now.

"_Business, certainly,"_ William countered. _"Did you know by then it was Chief Crown Attorney Carmichael himself who had killed Mr. Sutton?" _

Miss Hart sucked in a breath to speak, but William did not let her.

"_I have witnesses who place you and Inspector McWorthy in the lounge of the Queen's Hotel, thirty minutes after the call was placed from your morgue telephone to the station house. The waiter said you each had a brandy. While you were with McWorthy you slipped the spare morgue key in his pocket, didn't you? You then went immediately to Inspector Brackenreid's office to tell us about the missing cold storage key, to point suspicion at McWorthy. At the time I thought it was odd that I smelled alcohol on your breath." _

William's voice was hoarse when he went on. _"Did you promise to meet McWorthy in his apartment for a rendezvous, while instead you ran off to implicate him in framing John Brackenreid? Or did you coldly set him up for murder?"_

"_What…?"_

"_A short time after you left the Queen's Hotel, Mr. Carmichael senior suddenly left his office, saying he was not feeling well and needed to go home. But this," _he set the last paper down, _"says that a witness saw him entering Horace McWorthy's residence." _

"_Detective, I…I…"_ Miss hart was pleading now.

"_The only thing I cannot work out is if you and Chief Crown Attorney Carmichael conspired to kill Inspector McWorthy together, actually did the deed together, or if you merely set up McWorthy, knowing that Carmichael senior would eliminate him. Because the timing is exquisite. Or was that just luck?"_

The strangled sound from Miss Hart's throat was harsh in the small room. When she did not say anything in her defense, William scraped up the papers, tapped them back into a neat pile and placed them back into the folder. When William pushed his chair back, Miss Hart gave a startled yelp.

"_I...I did not know he killed Mr. Sutton, nor that he was going to k...kill Inspector McWorthy…!" _Miss Hart eventually stammered. William had never heard her be so discommoded before. _"That was not part of our deal. And I...I did not know he planned to implicate John Brackenreid either. He made it sound rather simple to find a piece of bullet fragment…"_

"_Oh, did he now? I bet you thought you were the one manipulating him, weren't you?"_ William's voice lowered. _"Come, now, Miss Hart. There is no one else here. What happened?"_

"_I panicked. I finally got the position I wanted, have worked for, for the last two years."_ Miss Hart was summoning up defiance again. _"You cannot prove I had anything to do with Inspector McWorthy's death! I realized that planting evidence against John Brackenreid was wrong and I believed that Inspector McWorthy was behind it. I thought he knew what Mr. Carmichael was going to ask of me, had betrayed me by getting me in trouble, so I was just getting back at him. I thought the key would embarrass him and take the focus off me."_

William rather doubted that was all she did. He sighed. _"That does you no honour, Miss Hart...or should I say Miss Keziah Kittery?"_

She merely gasped again, then silence.

William's voice remained flat. "_That is your true, Christian, given name, is it not? Miss Keziah Kittery, who once sold patent medicines for Samuel Brubaker Hartman. Sold enough to elevate you out of a difficult, impoverished childhood. You cornered the market. Except it all started collapsing in 1905 when __Colliers Magazine__ published an expose on the dangerous fraud that product, called Peruna, really was. A product you sold to other poor and unwitting people. You told them it would help them with their sickness, but all it did was help line your pockets with their hard-earned money, at the expense of their lives in some cases. But you are an ambitious one, aren't you?" _

_Miss Hart said, "No…"_

"_You saw the proverbial writing on the wall, didn't you? You got out of the patent medicine scheme...Before it all collapsed, you sold your business and your storehouse of goods for a profit, even though you knew it was harmful."_

"_N…no…" _

"_You knew Peruna was dangerous, but you even sold it to your sister for her baby's colic. The baby became addicted. And when she could not afford the high price you charged, and that little baby went into withdrawal, had convulsions and died…"_

"_Stop it! Stop it!" _she wailed. Miss Hart was crying now, her first genuine-sounding emotion.

"_They don't know it was your fault, do they? Your family still thinks it was God's will, when you know better, don't you?"_

_"You don't understand...I had no idea about my niece until it was too late." _ She paused, trying to collect herself before going on in a rush._ "It is not wrong to be ambitions, to rise above one's station. But the doors to advancement remained shut to me. No one has to know your religion...you can hide it or abandon it if you so choose. You're still a white male, you married well, you've earned a respectable position...I don't have that choice...my sex and the color of my skin does not change!" _she sobbed.

William nodded, sensing her deep grief and guilt about her niece, yet sad that Violet Hart still could not see the harm in her rationalization. _"There is truth in some of that," _he told her,_ "which is why I do have consideration for your predicament."_

William's compassion only caused Miss Hart to cry harder.

_"But there is no excuse for your callous disregard and it is not you who are a victim here, Miss Hart."_ William went on, seemingly unaffected by her emotional display. _"You have not finished your medical studies, have you? Because to do so will require you to produce your academic documents, and you can't, because 'Violet Hart' did not exist until you had to leave town and change your name to avoid people coming after you for the harm you caused."_

"_Stop! That is why I researched vital-amines, an actually helpful product, to make amends. I…I wanted to go to medical school and become a physician so I could make up for the harm I had done…but I could not even do that without…"_

"_Cheating?" _William supplied. _"Your ambition has corrupted you."_

William heard the click of the recording device...

William sat back in his chair after turning off the wax cylinder device, appreciating Alderman Hubbard's shocked face after hearing what the machine just played. "Sir, you saw that Miss Hart left by the front door, and you came in immediately through the back door. I had no time to fabricate this evidence. This is a true recording of my conversation with Miss Hart."

Alderman Hubbard was still obviously disturbed. "Did she participate in Inspector McWorthy's murder?"

William shrugged. "I have only a time-line; no telephone records, no proof. I think it might have been luck, Alderman. But she has obstructed justice, tampered with evidence, and I can prove that. You heard her confession."

William had used every shred of experience as an interviewer, every trick he ever knew for breaking a suspect, extracting a confession, to herd Miss Hart to that end and away from saying anything on the recording which implicated Julia.

_Julia...the whole reason he'd stooped to this business. Even if he'd failed to offer her the comfort she'd needed earlier, he could at least ensure her freedom and safety._

He'd shut the recording switch as soon as Miss Hart uttered everything he wanted from her. Off the record, the woman had immediately accused him of trying to blackmail her.

He answered, as bluntly as he could: _"No, Miss Hart. I have made no threat and no demands. The question is, are _you_ going to blackmail my wife or Inspector Brackenreid?" _

Violet Hart... o_r Keziah Kittery..._ had spent years as a huckster. That made her a master manipulator, able to mirror the people in her surroundings while probing for weaknesses. Once she understood the transactional nature of the meeting between them, her face took on a resigned look, along with, he fancied he saw, a fleeting admiration for him for stalemating her.

That was the whole point: Mutual assured destruction.

_Her past career explains a few things about her behaviors_, William realized. That also meant she knew not to waste her time or energy when there was no sale to be made, when an argument was lost.

He ended the conversation quickly to get her out of the building and away so he could immediately host the alderman. She could not wait to leave.

William put on his most sober and sincere manner for the alderman. "I wanted you to understand my dilemma, Alderman Hubbard. I am aware that having Miss Hart fall from grace immediately after being elevated to her current prestigious position would be a blow to the Control Board and constabulary's credibility with the courts and the public…"

"Not to mention my community," the elderly man said. It would be a disaster to have the highest-profile black woman in Toronto disgraced. "I appreciate your discretion, Detective Murdoch. As a member of the Board of Control I do not wish to hear about another example of our incompetence splashed in the press. You were not bluffing, were you?" he gestured to the folder full of papers.

"No, sir. I have been investigating Miss Hart for some time, and between my own efforts and those of a private detective I hired, we have finger marks, sworn statements, a great deal of circumstantial evidence and a motive, all of which corroborates my theory. At minimum, I do believe she got greedy, in over her head and panicked. Her solution was to spread suspicion on Inspector McWorthy. She was canny enough to think that someone else might scapegoat McWorthy, perhaps eliminate him, but that is not a conspiracy _per se_. In any event, her co-conspirators are both dead. I was just trying to frighten her…"

"You frightened me, detective," Hubbard chuckled darkly.

"Indeed. The saving grace is that in this matter her behaviors did not, in the end, produce a false conviction. We now know she is capable of manufacturing evidence, interfering with cases. I am wary of her cooking up something as revenge for backing her into a corner."

"Revenge against you? Your wife?" Hubbard expressed mild alarm. "Perhaps the trouble of arresting her now will save us more trouble later."

"I thought of that. But I do not fancy our chances in a court of law nor the collateral damage. I am hoping that since she has been called out on her behavior, it will chasten her from here on out." _And that I have inoculated Julia, the inspector and myself from any future accusations from her direction,_ William hoped silently.

After a moment the alderman nodded in understanding. "And you wanted someone else to know about it, as an insurance policy of sorts?" Hubbard asked.

William admitted as much. "Yes, partly. The pity is that she is technically an excellent pathologist, although without the experience of law enforcement and the medical degree we have come to expect from our Chief City Coroner. Her scope is narrow. She needs guidance. I fear she will not be able to always present her findings well in court because of her inexperience. What I have learned about her, should anyone else care to investigate, makes her subject to blackmail."

"And as you said, her ambition has corrupted her. Would you like me to keep an eye on her, detective?"

"Yes. And I want to give you copies of all these documents as well as the recording for safekeeping."

Alderman Hubbard's eyes glittered. "You are putting a great deal of trust in my hands, Detective."

"Yes sir," he said simply. Unlike Julia, William did not believe in failing to follow through to all the consequences. He was not going this one alone. "I hope she has learned from her mistake, Alderman, and that the Control Board will closely oversee her work, inviting reports, etcetera. There may come a time it will be necessary to expose all of this…" William left the sentence unfinished, the silence lengthening between them.

With a decisive dip of his head, Alderman Hubbard rose, gathering the folder and the wax cylinder which William carefully removed from its player device and placed in a protective box. "There are now two openings for Inspector, Detective Murdoch. Too bad Mr. Templeton has turned his father-in-law against you. If it were up to me, I'd let you have your pick. But, alas, it is not up to me. Just as I will never be head of the Board of Control or Mayor, you will never be an Inspector…" He smiled at William. "Well, at least not in my lifetime. So be it. Now, how shall I get home?"

"Inspector Brackenreid is likely out front, after taking Miss Hart home," William smiled back when the Alderman raised his eyebrows. "We felt it best to limit knowledge of our meeting tonight. Not even my wife knows I am here. It is just the three of us and Miss Hart."

"What if Miss Hart had become suspicious, tried to attack you, Detective?"

William had been prepared for almost anything, but the Alderman did not need to know that. "Oh, I would have thought of something…"

_**# # # # # # # # # # # # # **_

…_**.Five O'clock in the morning, Chez Murdoch...**_

Julia had been sitting in the dark for hours, only moving to stoke the fire. When she heard William's key in the lock, she jumped up, eager to make amends when she stopped short, attempting to gauge his mood.

His countenance was sober, red-eyed, tired, but at least he was looking at her now. When his eyes met hers, their gaze connected with a jolt. She leapt up and ran to him, crying.

They both exhaled a sigh they hadn't realized they'd been holding as their arms found one another.

Grabbing her face between his hands, he pulled her close for an embrace, relishing the feel of her fingernails digging in his scalp. They stood there for a moment, fervently kissing one another until Julia felt something odd as she pressed against him.

"William?" Julia asked as she moved to explore the strange bulge in his jacket pocket.

Standing silently, he allowed her to pull the .38 revolver from his coat. Julia looked up at him with wide, worried eyes. "Miss Hart?" she gasped, disbelieving.

"No one was physically harmed tonight, Julia. I know you want to know, but I cannot tell you what transpired. I need you to trust me. Just know that I will always love you and will always protect you," he murmured.

A shiver ran down her spine. She tended to forget how powerful and cunning her husband could be when he chose or as the situation demanded. Nodding, she accepted the awful… painful… _wonderful_… truth that her actions led William to undertake something he wouldn't normally do. She stroked his face.

"William, I love you and I am your wife...I…" she began before he put his finger to her lips, understanding what she had been trying to say.

"That's enough for me, Mrs. Murdoch. I've already taken the day off, perhaps you could do the same?" he asked.

"It's already been done, Mr. Murdoch. Shall we finally retire?"

"Indeed."

**-END- **

**A/N: **We thought that neutralizing Miss Hart was fair game for another story. If you study the episodes and dialogue carefully, you will see that the timeline of events is laid out just as we presented in the story. RuthieGreen thinks it is VERY suspicious that Miss Hart got that key into McWorthy's pocket, came directly from there to Brax and W to complain about it being missing and then Brax goes over directly to McWorthy's apartment only to find McWorthy dead. (You can tell it is all one day/sequence because of Miss Hart's outfit and the men's ties!-Yep, that is the way you can tell!) Did Miss Hart call Carmichael and set McWorthy up? Did she know Carmichael was going to eliminate McWorthy and take advantage? RuthieGreen actually wondered if she was there with McWorthy when Carmichael killed him…(That is a little out there, but…) We also wanted to somehow make Miss Hart more sympathetic-a la Peter Mitchell saying we fans misjudge her...So it took a lot of imagination and (a little fudging, but, well...MM does that all the time) to come up with something that fit the bill.

There was a big Patent Medicine scandal in 1905, publicized by _Colliers Magazine_ \- just in time for Miss Hart to have switched careers….

_**Review, speculation, commentary is encouraged...what do YOU think Miss Hart was involved in? FB & RG**_


End file.
